What’s the worst another drink could do? John Cheever pours out our most sociable of vices, and hands it to us in a highball. From the calculating teenager who raids her parents’ liquor cabinet, only to drown her sorrows in it, to the suburban swimmer withering away with every plunge he takes, these are stories suffused with beauty, sadness, and the gathering storm of a bender well-done. Seen through the gin-lacquered looking glass of Cheever’s writing, your next drink may have you reaching for a lime and soda instead.

What's the worst another drink could do? John Cheever pours out our most sociable of vices, and hands it to us in a highball. From the calculating teenager who raids her parents' liquor cabinet, only to drown her sorrows in it, to the suburban swimmer withering away with every plunge he takes, these are stories suffused with beauty, sadness, and the gathering storm of a bender well-done. Seen through the gin-lacquered looking glass of Cheever's writing, your next drink may have you reaching for a lime and soda instead.

What's the worst another drink could do? John Cheever pours out our most sociable of vices, and hands it to us in a highball. From the calculating teenager who raids her parents' liquor cabinet, only to drown her sorrows in it, to the suburban swimmer withering away with every plunge he takes, these are stories suffused with beauty, sadness, and the gathering storm of a bender well-done. Seen through the gin-lacquered looking glass of Cheever's writing, your next drink may have you reaching for a lime and soda instead.

Discover John Cheever’s quirky psychological novel that is the perfect book club read. Ezekiel Farragut is a college professor, a drug-addict and a murderer. Locked in Falconer State Penitentiary, he struggles through tormenting visits from his wife, the burden of memory and guilt, and the brutal monotony of his surroundings to retain his humanity, eventually finding the possibility of redemption through an affair with a fellow prisoner. Considered by many to be Cheever's masterpiece, Falconer is a tour de force from one of America's greatest storytellers.

John Cheever's journals reveal the inner life of this remarkable writer and the contradictions that drove him. He loved his wife and their children, but was acutely lonely; he loved women, but he also loved men; he hated himself for his drinking, but for much of his life was dependent upon it; he was a great writer, but one whose acute levels of perception often crippled him as a person. His journals are candid, beautiful and often startling.

This outstanding collection by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist John Cheever shows the power and range of one of the finest short story writers of the last century. Stories of love and of squalor, they include masterpieces such as 'The Swimmer' and 'Goodbye, My Brother' and date from the time of his honourable discharge from the Army at the end of the Second World War.

Eliot Nailles loves his wife and son to distraction; Paul Hammer is a bastard named after a common household tool. Neighbours in Bullet Park, the two become fatefully linked by the mysterious binding power of their names in Cheever's sharp and funny hymn to the dubious normality of the American suburbs.

The first novel John Cheever wrote is a wonderful introduction to his writing; clever, funny, charming and bursting with life Meet the Wapshots of St Botolphs. There is Captain Leander Wapshot, venerable sea-dog and would-be suicide; his licentious older son, Moses; and Moses's adoring and errant younger brother, Coverly. Tragic and funny, ribald and splendidly picaresque, and partly based on Cheever's adolescence in New England, The Wapshot Chronicle is a family narrative in the finest traditions of Trollope, Dickens, and Henry James

Once upon a time the Wapshots of St. Botolphs were distinguished for their unshakeable good opinion of themselves. But the family members have drifted far from their New England village - and into the demented caprices of the mighty, the bad graces of the IRS and the humiliating abyss of adulterous passion. A novel of large and tender vision, The Wapshot Scandal is filled with pungent characters and outrageous twists of fate, and, above all, with Cheever's luminous compassion for all his hapless fellow prisoners of human nature. Reviews

John Cheever - the 'Chekhov of the suburbs' - forever altered the landscape of contemporary literature. In a career that spanned nearly fifty years, his short stories, often published in the New Yorker, gave voice to the repressed desires and smouldering disappointments of 1950s America as it teetered on the edge of spiritual awakening and sexual liberation in the ensuing decades. Selected for the first time, these satirical, fantastical, sad and transcendent stories show Cheever in all his brilliance and continue to speak directly to the heart of human experience.

Why were so many authors of the greatest works of literature consumed by alcoholism? In The Trip to Echo Spring, Olivia Laing takes a journey across America, examining the links between creativity and drink in the overlapping work and lives of six extraordinary men: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever and Raymond Carver. From Hemingway’s Key West to Williams’s New Orleans, Laing pieces together a topographical map of alcoholism, and strips away the tangle of mythology to reveal the terrible price creativity can exert.

'A delight to read' Evening Standard In an idyllic American village, elderly romantic Lemuel Sears still has it in him to fall wildly in love with strangers of both sexes. But Sears's paradise is under threat; the pond he loves is being fouled by unscrupulous polluters involved in organised crime. Can Sears thwart the monstrous aspects of late-twentieth-century civilisation and save his beloved village? Cheever's wry fable of modern American is interlaced with musings on everything from the etiquette of supermarket queues to the evolution of the ice-skate.

First published as John Barleycorn, Jack London's autobiographical novel is a harrowing account of a life undermined by alcoholism. Offering an honest and insightful look into his fascinating life, A Drinking Life remains an essential work of early 20th century literature by one of America's quintessential writers.

The first authorised selected collection of the twentieth-century's most influential short story writer. Selected and Introduced by Julian Barnes Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, John Cheever - variously referred to as 'Ovid in Ossining' and the 'Chekhov of the suburbs' - forever altered the landscape of contemporary literature. In a career that spanned nearly fifty years, his short stories, often published in the New Yorker, gave voice to the repressed desires and smouldering disappointments of 1950s America as it teetered on the edge of spiritual awakening and sexual liberation in the ensuing Sixties. Up until now, John Cheever's stories have only been available in Collected Stories, but with Julian Barnes' selection we have the first fully authorised introduction to Cheever's work. Satirical, fantastical, sad and transcendent, these are stories that speak directly to the heart of human experience, and remain a testament to the wit and vision of one of the most important and influential short story writers of the twentieth century.

All the drinking games you'll need for the perfect night out …or in!Drinking is great, right? But not on your own. That's sad. Thankfully, The Little Book of Drinking Games is here to help you - and your friends - find an excuse to get drunk and let your hair down.Jam-packed with more than 50 drinking games of all shapes and sizes, this pocket compendium will have you thinking, drinking and pint-sinking in no time. The Little Book of Drinking Games contains the best classic drinking games (that you're usually too drunk to remember the rules to), games inspired by your favorite movies and TV shows as well as a few games that are destined to become new traditions

In It All Adds Up, Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning author Saul Bellow takes readers on a brilliantly insightful journey through literary America over a forty-year period. In sentence after sentence, page after page, readers are offered brilliant perceptions and unusual insights into everyday life in America and the life of the mind. Moving from political figures like Roosevelt and Khrushchev to artists like Mozart, Dostoevsky, and John Cheever, from New York and Chicago to Paris-and including the deeply personal "Autobiography of Ideas"-Bellow, with great humor and wisdom, records the enduring thoughts and opinions of a lifetime of observation, thoughts that speak to us with renewed energy for our times.